Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings
This week’s Audio Flashback is the Serenade for Strings by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was born 181 years ago this week. TŌN performed the work with conductor Leon Botstein on September 19, 2020 as part of the “Out of the Silence” festival, presented with the Bard Music Festival (BMF) and the Fisher Center at Bard. In his concert notes on the Serenade, BMF Artistic Codirector Christopher H. Gibbs notes that Tchaikovsky was writing this piece at the same time as his famous 1812 Overture, and wrote in a letter to his patron, “The overture will be very noisy. I wrote it without much warmth or enthusiasm; therefore it has no great artistic value. The Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from an inward impulse; I felt it, and venture to hope that this work is not without artistic qualities.” You can read the full notes on the Serenade by clicking here.